ACROSS AMERICA — Persistently, they have marched, raised their voices along with placards reading “Black Lives Matter” and “I can’t breathe,” the latter being among the final words of George Floyd while he gasped for air as a white police officer in Minneapolis held a knee to his neck.
Floyd’s police custody death has galvanized Americans calling for an end to police brutality and the beginning of earnest attempts by politicians and others to address systemic racism and fulfill a promise made to black Americans with the Civil Rights Act decades ago.
Floyd, who was accused by a store owner of passing a counterfeit $20 bill, isn’t the first American of color to be killed in the custody of white police officers. The list of names is long: Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York. Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Philando Castile in the Twin Cities. Laquan McDonald in Chicago. Tamir Rice in Cleveland. Botham Jean in Dallas.
The list goes on.
See Also: All 4 Minneapolis Officers Charged As Protests Continue
Those fighting for racial justice consider this a seminal moment in history, and they fear their message risks being lost to the considerable plunder and violence that have overshadowed peaceful voices. Here, from the streets of America, are some of the voices from the demonstrations:
Darnelle Dasne, who was demonstrating in Crown Heights, New York:
Dionna Flowers, protesting in Chicago:
High school students in Evergreen, Illinois:
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Terrence Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, in a call for peaceful protests and an end to the violence in Minneapolis:
Community organizer Will Calloway in Chicago:
Candice Quinerly, a demonstrator in Joliet, Illinois:
Keedron Bryant, a 12-year-old from Jacksonville, Florida, who expressed his fear as a coming-of-age black youth in song:
Shy Richards, a protester in Joliet, Illinois, speaking to police:
Violence In Boston founder Monica Cannon-Grant:
Myles Holland, a protester in Atlanta, on what he will tell his children about the arrest and death of George Floyd:
Protester Darryl Carson in Vienna, Virginia:
Marques Armstrong, a Minneapolis business consultant and community activist, via CBC News:
Heather Ann Thompson, a professor of history and Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who won the Pulitzer Prize in History for “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy,” and a scholar of 1960s and 1970s protest movements, particularly against white supremacy and mass incarceration:
Chad Bennett, who watched protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police custody death of back teenager Michael Brown in 2014, via The New York Times:
Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, via The New Yorker:
Patrisse Cullors, a cofounder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, via news station KTLA:
NAACP Minneapolis President Leslie Redmond, via National Public Radio:
Chloe Wallace, a 26-year-old white woman who lives near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Williamsburg, via The New York Times:
Erika Zdon, who drove with her children from their rural Minnesota home to take part in a protest at the site where George Floyd died:
Bakari Sellers, a 35-year-old attorney whose father was shot during a 1968 protest at South Carolina State University, via People:
Laura Zimmermann, a white mom with two kids living in Oak Park, Illinois, via ABC’s “Good Morning America”:
Evan Kutcher, who was chanting Floyd’s name as and hundreds of others demonstrated outside the Barclays Center in New York City Tuesday, via The Associated Press:
Brittney Johnson of Los Angeles, via NBC News:
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